


Shadows and Stardust

by Okami_no_fude



Series: Linked Universe oneshots [11]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, First attempt at writing a fight scene, Hurt No Comfort, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Minor Character Death, Shadow beasts, Warriors' and Twilight's perspectives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 10:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21159935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okami_no_fude/pseuds/Okami_no_fude
Summary: It all started when they had encountered a new enemy.---“There is something else you are not saying Twilight, something that has you very concerned. What is it?"





	1. Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags carefully before proceeding.   
Edit: This fic contains two different perspectives, the first one being Warriors', and the other being Twilight.
> 
> Inspired from a conversation I had in the LU discord back in August.  
[Linked Universe](https://linkeduniverse.tumblr.com/) belongs to @jojo56830  
Legend of Zelda belongs to Nintendo.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warriors' perspective.

It all started when they had encountered a new enemy.

They had been finishing off a bokoblin camp that was terrorizing a nearby settlement when Hyrule had warned the group that something was incoming. When they all faced where Hyrule indicated and prepared themselves, they were not expecting something unknown.

Three black, hulking figures with strange red markings on its torso, black tendrils wavering behind an odd-looking mask that looked somewhat familiar to Warriors, but he could not for the life of him pinpoint why he felt that way. 

“What are these guys?! Does anyone recognize them?” Wind asked out as he finished off the last bokoblin, slicing his sword into the tainted enemy’s back.

Sky shook his head. “Not from my era, never seen these guys.”

“Me neither,” Four said.

Legend readied his sword. “Well, we still need to take it down, regardless if any of us know this enemy or not.”

“Twilight, what is wrong?”

Warriors looked back when he heard Wild voicing his concern. He could see why.

The usually calm yet fierce hero of twilight had his eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar, and face extremely pale as if he saw a ghost.

To be fair, the enemies that were slowly approaching was something that would come straight out from a hellish nightmare.

“Twilight? Pup?” Time tried calling him out to get a response, but it did not work; Twilight was still frozen in place. 

Warriors stepped in front of Twilight and shook him on the shoulder. “Twilight! Get yourself together Twilight!”

That seemed to do the trick as he shook his head as to clear his mind. “Sorry Warriors,” he replied rather weakly. The captain wanted to ask what was wrong with him, but now was not the time when the new enemies were slowly approaching them.”

“Twilight, do you know what those are?”

Twilight, still pale, gave him a small nod. “Yes...they are called shadow beasts. You need to kill the last two at the same time or they will revive each other,” he gritted out. 

An enemy that revives others if it is the last one? That was new and also a very annoying ability to deal with.

“Why do your enemies have annoying abilities and tricks?” He heard Legend groan out before they prepared to fight it. 

The shadow beast made a slow but powerful lunge toward the closest Link, that being Wind. The youngest hero easily dodged the swipe with a backflip and landed next to Hyrule. “So we defeat one of them before we try to finish the other two with a wide-area attack?” 

That was a solid plan since none of them bar Twilight knew what these beasts were capable of, and Warriors could tell that Twilight was clearly too shaken to give any more information useful for combat than what he had given. 

The same beast lunged toward Sky, but the chosen hero was ready, greeting the beast with a strong shield bash and making it flinch. Using this opening, Four who was next to Sky made a low sweeping slash towards its legs. The beast let out a low groan as the Four Sword sliced through their skin without much resistance and stumbled back, before growling at the offending heroes, lumbering towards them more nimbly than they expected.

The two heroes that were in front of the beast managed to dodge roll away from its path, letting Wild take a few shots at the charging enemy. One on each leg and torso had it crashing down, letting Legend who was the closest take advantage and stabbed his sword through the neck. It let out a pitiful gurgle before going limp.

While that was happening, the rest of the heroes were distracting the two remaining shadow beasts, being careful to not outright kill it and putting equal amounts of damage to both. 

“Twilight, how did you take care of them when you were on your journey?!” Warriors asked urgently as he raised his shield and blocked one of its swipes. Twilight grimaced, rolling out of the way from another swipe. “I usually had let it come close enough so that I could take them out with one spin attack, but with so many of us it might not focus on one target.” 

That was a risky move Warriors did not really want to implement. He was going through his knowledge of the group’s arsenals and abilities when Wind piped up. 

“I have a bigger, stronger variation of the spin attack I could utilize? I just need some space and someone to watch out for me after I use it for a few seconds to re-orientate myself.”

There wasn’t much time to think about it as the beasts were preparing to launch themselves toward them, so the tactician gave a nod to the youngest hero. “Do it.”

The Hero of Winds gave a wide smirk as he held out his sword horizontal to the ground. His Phantom Sword began to glow a bright yellow as Warriors could visibly see Wind channeling magic into the blade. With a loud war cry, Wind spun around in multiple huge circles, a yellow blur as it pulled in the black beasts into his spinning vortex of sword slices. 

The beasts collapsed to the ground dead and disintegrated as soon as the spinning subsided, leaving a staggering Wind in the middle of the carnage. “Did...I do...it?” he asked breathlessly before he fell over, narrowly avoiding hitting the ground thanks to a surprised but quick-acting Hyrule catching the dizzy hero. 

After making sure that none of the shadow beasts were coming back, the eldest hero approached the two and peered at the hero of Winds who was nestled in between the Hero of Hyrule’s arms. “That was impressive Wind, you had such a trick up your sleeve?” 

Wind had one of his arms covering his eyes while he waved toward the general vicinity of where Time was. “Yeah, that was the hurricane spin,” he said with a small groan. “A powerful attack and very useful against hoards of enemies that I need to attack at once, but it makes me dizzy after I use it.” 

That was understandable, seeing how long he had been spinning around. Warriors looked back where the first shadow beast should have been to make sure it had disintegrated, before checking on Twilight. He still looked somewhat pale, with a barely visible frown on his face. He could feel that the hero of twilight had something on his mind, but Warriors knew that he would just brush it off if he asked in front of everyone else.

Deciding to question him later when they were alone, he turned toward the group. “Alright, sound off! Anyone hurt?”

\---

It took a few days for him to get alone with Twilight, with many more questions buzzing in his brain as that was not the only encounter they had with the shadow beasts. They usually came in threes or fours, and the heroes made absolutely sure that those were all of them in the area before they engaged the beasts. While they did so, Warriors had been keeping an eye on Twilight. His fellow hero was doing his part of distracting and holding off the beasts, but he had a small but perpetual grimace. He could sometimes hear him mumbling something, but he could only catch the words “how many…”

How many what? Warriors could definitely tell there was something that continued after that sentence, and that was not merely him questioning how many of these beasts they would have to fight. There was something more to it than that.

It was about time he asked that.

“Twilight, is there something we need to know?”

Twilight looked up from his task of gathering wood. “What do you mean by that Warriors?” 

“You know what I am talking about.”

If he wasn’t experienced in dealing with these kinds of situations with his troops that were under his command, Warriors would have missed the small, brief tensing of the shoulders.

“What, about the shadow beasts? What about it? I did say that I have fought them in my journey and that they have the ability to revive others if you leave the last one alive. They revive the others with an ear-piercing cry if you must know.”

The tactician in him squirreled that information away, but that was not the part he wanted to ask.

“There is something else you are not saying Twilight, something that has you very concerned. What is it? And do not tell me that it is nothing. I am a captain in the army, I can tell when someone has something on their mind.”

There it was, the brief aversion of the eyes, the haunted look in the deep blue orbs, the small flinch.

“Right, I forgot you were at a high rank in the army,” Twilight sighed as if he was resigned to spill whatever he had in mind. “It’s just...it’s worrisome about the fact that the shadow beasts are here in this dimension at all.” 

Warriors raised his eyebrow at that. In this dimension? What did he mean with that?

Twilight continued to explain. “While those creatures may be from my era, it did not originate from my world. It came from a different world, an...opposite world to that of Hyrule, you could say. The thing is...the gateway between the two worlds is...broken. So... there should be no way that the Shadow beast would exist on this side of the world! And yet…”

Twilight was not looking at him anymore, staring at the ground, his hands clenching around the firewood he had gathered. Warriors saw this and was immediately concerned. Twilight seemed to have a lot of emotion about the connection between the world being severed. He was about to voice this when Twilight lowered his load to the ground slowly, a hand on the hilt of his sword. 

He heard the rustling of bushes right after. 

Warriors quickly put his back to Twilight as he drew his sword out. 

From three different directions, the shadow beasts came lumbering out of the foliage, surrounding them. 

“Shit how did they sneak up on us?” he hissed out while cursing in his mind that both of them had left their shields back at camp since the firewood trip was supposed to be a fast one. 

“Does it matter? We need to take them out anyway. Warriors, you fine with dispatching one of them while I deal with the other two?”

While Warriors did not like leaving Twilight outnumbered by powerful foes, it was also Twilight that had the most experience against these enemies out of all of them. 

He reluctantly agreed. “Don’t push yourself Twilight.”

“Same goes for you.”

Warriors took a step toward the lone shadow beast as he felt Twilight leave his previous position to engage the other two. He knew the quicker he disposed of them, the sooner he could aid Twilight and even the odds. But rushing forward was not something he should do with these kinds of relatively unknown enemies.

Watching it slowly approach him, he shifted his stance, right foot forward. The captain quickly stepped slightly to the side and left, tilting his sword over his right shoulder to guard himself against any additional attacks from the beast, then fluidly shifted forward, swinging his sword upward. He sliced across their masked face and continued on, cutting off a few of the black tendrils on top of their head. Using the momentum of his strike, he maneuvered himself to the left side of the beast and swung his sword down, scoring another hit on the flinching beast’s side. It roared in anger and made another sideswipe toward Warriors, but he anticipated that and had already taken a step back as soon he had finished his overhead slash. 

The black substance he presumed to be the creature’s blood was dripping out from the wound he just made, but not by much. It was weird to see how little these creatures bleed no matter how deep they make the wounds since they could not gauge how much damage they had inflicted unless a body part was physically not attached to the rest of the body.

He could hear some roars and war cries off to his side, but he did his best to not instinctively check on how his fellow hero was doing. He sidestepped to the right again as he let the beast come to him, as for now, he knew it was better to counterattack than initiate the attack since he could not do the usual tactics of utilizing a shield to stun his opponents. He felt his blade meet some resistance before the flesh gave way, allowing him to score another long and deep slash wound to its’ side.

He clicked his tongue as the beast lurched back at the last second, making him miss the opportunity to hack off its left limb. From the edge of his vision, Warriors saw something black rushing toward him, making him hastily execute a dodge roll as the black claws raked the air where his head used to be moments before. As he came out of his dodge roll he made a low sweep toward its legs.

The beast let out another agonizing roar as it stumbled to the ground, its right leg chopped clean off at the knee. The captain did not waste time in capitalizing the beast’s weakness and he quickly thrust his sharp sword through its throat. With a low keen, the Shadow beast completely collapsed onto the ground, the sword glistening with the black substance. 

After he made sure the beast was down, he pulled out his sword, ignoring the rather sickening squelching sound as he drew. Giving it a last glance, Warriors quickly sprinted toward where Twilight was.

The aforementioned hero was in the middle of jumping over one of the beasts as he greeted the enemy’s head with a downward slice. He was a little surprised at the technique and wanted to ask Twilight where he learned that fancy move, but it wasn’t the time to do so. “Twilight! I’ve taken care of one of them! We can clear this up!”

“Got it!” Twilight yelled as leveled his sword behind him horizontally to the ground. Warriors could tell that he was baiting the two of them to draw in close enough for Twilight to finish them off with a spin attack. It was risky, but both of them did not have any other wide area attack besides their spin attacks. He gripped his sword tightly, nervous for his comrade. As soon as the beasts raised their long black limbs, Twilight let out a shout as he let loose a spin attack, slicing deeply through the throat of the first shadow.

His eyes widened in alarm as the second shadow beast that was right in front of Twilight leaned backward, the tip of the sword barely missing the throat of the beast.

“SHI--”

The hero of Twilight was not able to finish his cursing as the last beast who was still standing let out a horrible, ear-piercing shriek that echoed throughout the forest. Warriors never heard something so painful and he could not help but flinch and wince as the shriek still rang in his ears. He opened his eyes as the ringing began to subside, but then it widened in horror.

“Twilight!”

Flecks of red sprayed out, accompanied by a pained cry as black claws swung upward, glistening with vivid crimson.

Twilight quickly backpedaled as fast as he could without losing balance, his right hand covering his left arm as he could see fabric right above his arm guard quickly staining red. Warriors quickly rushed forward and thrust his sword through the throat of the advancing beast that had released that shriek, quickly ending its offending existence. “Twilight!” he called out worryingly, swiftly planting himself in front of the revived beast and the injured hero.

“It’s only a scratch, not life-threatening Warriors,” Twilight gritted out. “Those bastards got smarter than when I had fought them on my journey, they aimed for my sword arm.” 

He heard some shuffling behind him and Warriors risked a glance. Twilight was wiping his hand before switching his sword to his right hand.

“You’re ambidextrous?” Warriors asked, surprised at the motion.

“Yeah, I had to learn with my right arm when I had broken my left arm. Kept practicing even after it healed in case that my left arm was rendered useless, like now,” Twilight gave a self-deprecating snort. He then spun around and took a defensive stance, his back facing his.

Warriors cursed under his breath. He had forgotten the beast he had put down earlier was behind them. 

This was not a favorable situation for both of them. While the numbers were the same, Twilight was injured, and despite what Twilight said, the captain could spy blood slowly dripping down his left arm. Twilight could not risk losing more blood, which would happen if he continued fighting. The fact that the beast dodged the spin attack showed that it was risky for him to do one either. 

“Warriors, I think at this point we need to either time our finishing blows perfectly or stall this out. I don’t like to rely on chance, but I bet the others would have heard that loud shriek.”

Twilight had a point. That shriek was extremely loud as it was unnatural.

He decided to bank on that possibility.

“Alright, we stall while try retreating toward the direction of the camp. Don’t exert yourself Twilight, you are losing more blood than I would like.”

“I told you, Warriors, it’s just a scratch, it just looks worse than it actually is.”

“I will be the judge of that later,” he growled out as he blocked the oncoming swipe.

Warriors was slightly impressed on how Twilight managed to continue engaging the shadow beast with his sword in his right hand, but the captain could tell he was struggling a little, probably with the fact that it was not his dominant hand, and thus lacked the strength that Twilight’s sword strikes usually had. He was still losing blood as well, the trail of red drops visible on the forest ground. 

Warriors was about to suggest for them to fully retreat when he felt his hair stand on end, fizzing a little.

“Twilight! Warriors! Get back from them!”

Quickly reacting to shout, he quickly grabbed Twilight’s upper arm and pulled him away from the beast. 

Not a moment too soon, two large lightning strikes of magical origin struck the two shadow beasts. The vile beasts let out roars of agony before dropping dead, disintegrating as the sparks of lightning dissipated.

Twin loud sighs of relief could be heard as shadow beasts were dealt with and the sorely welcome shouts of their friends reached the tired heroes. Warriors planted his sword into the ground as he gently pulled Twilight’s left arm to examine the wound. Five horizontal tears could be seen starting from just below the chain mail and ending right above the arm guard, dyeing that area dark red. Luckily they did not look too deep either.

The captain fished out a clean cloth from his pack and began to apply pressure to it, ignoring Twilight’s small wince.

“The others are not going to be happy.”

“No, they won’t be.”

\---

None of them were particularly happy about this incident, and they had unanimously voted that one should retreat to get help from the others to deal with these beasts if they find themselves going against without all of the group heroes present. Only Hyrule, Legend, and Time had a surefire method of taking the last two at once with their respective spells, Sky’s skyward strike spin attack and both Wind’s and Four’s hurricane spin technique was also another option, but it was rather situational and risky due to it being variations of spin attacks. 

With all the drama, Warriors had forgotten what he had wanted to ask Twilight, but he was not expecting his questions about the shadow beasts and the world where they came from to be answered in such a devastating form.

\---

They had run across a group of the nasty shadow beasts, but there was more than the usual monsters, a total of 12 of them. The group of heroes quickly got to work and started taking them down, but something felt a little off. All of them were far more crafty in their attack patterns than the ones they faced in the past, and as such, they were uneasy even after they had felled the last two together, via Time’s Din’s fire.

“Was it just me, or were they much more...coordinated?” Four asked as he stared at the corpses of the shadow beasts slowly disintegrating.

Time agreed with Four’s assessment. “It was as if they had a hive mind. It also seemed to be capable of having a sense of self-preservation.” The old man turned toward Twilight. “Is this their typical behavior when they are in bigger groups, Twilight?.

It was concerning for the tactician to see the hero of twilight shake his head. “I personally have never seen such coordination. My era’s Princess Zelda has told me that when the army of shadow beasts had invaded Hyrule castle, it was somewhat coordinated, but she could not tell much about the beasts’ tactics as it was mostly hidden with the dark dust clouds. The only thing I can think of is that they had a...”

Whatever Twilight was going to say then Warriors could never ask as a loud shriek echoed through the field they were in. A cloud of dark dust appeared from the edge of the forest as strange black and orange pillars dropped from out of nowhere, creating a weird barrier and penning the group in the field like it was a large arena.

All of them tensed and readied their weapons as they waited for the cloud dust to settle.

“Scatter!!” Hyrule suddenly yelled out, and not a moment too soon as a huge black and red energy ball soared toward them.

A crater three times the size of the energy ball was left in the ground where they had been standing on.

“What was that magic?” Legend yelled out. “It’s far more powerful than the dark magic that was surrounding the shadow beasts!” 

Whatever creature that sent that orb, they could not tell as the cloud of dark dust obscured their vision.

“Sky, try sending a skyward strike at the dust cloud!” Warriors heard Twilight yell out. Did he have a clue as to what it was?

Obliging to Twilight’s instructions, the chosen hero raised the Master Sword high into the air and let it charged the holy energy. As soon as it was ready, Sky swung the Master sword in a straight downward slash. The holy energy disc traveled through the dust clouds, and the heroes watched with bated breath as the disc dissolved the dust clouds, clearing the area.

The Shadow beast that emerged from the cloud was far more massive than the rest of the shadow beasts they had fought, easily twice the height of Time. Instead of the rough, circular markings on their masks, these had very smooth masks, with strange engraved markings that looked like intertwining lines leading up to a red crystal on one end. In place of the tendrils, two long protrusions were sticking out near the middle, the ends curled inward. Was it a shadow beast? It did have the same glowing red markings…

Warriors heard Four ask pretty much what he was thinking to Twilight. What he heard was concerning. 

“I have never seen these kinds before, but I have heard from Zelda that there also seemed to be ranks among the beasts.”

Time narrowed his good eye. “So this thing is far more powerful than the ones we have fought, perhaps more intelligent as well. 

_ “Fantastic.” _

“Guys, it’s charging up energy between the horns !” Wind alerted everyone. Sure enough, the same black and red energy ball that flew at them earlier was swirling between the two protrusions. “Do you think we would be able to deflect the energy ball back?”

“NO!” Twilight yelled out strongly, startling everyone at the ferocity of the tone. “If it’s the same energy as the one I faced during my journey, it is too risky! Avoid the black cloud it was in earlier if it produces it as well! You will get cursed into a different form at the very least!”

At the very least? What did Twilight mean by that?

He had no time to ask about that as they had to scatter once again to avoid the second energy ball.

They did not know the defensive capabilities, so the tactician asked some of the heroes to use range attacks, to which it was answered with volleys of regular arrows from Wild, magical fire from Four, Legend, and Hyrule, and a light arrow from Wind. Both the arrows and the fire magic was swiped to the side or counterattack by its own magic, while it dodged the light arrow completely in a show of speed that surprised him.

“This thing is fast!” Wild groaned.

Four then made an observation that made them feel the chills shoot down their spines.

“It had shown us that it is capable of moving that fast to avoid the light arrow; does that mean it was toying with us when it was shoot down our own projectiles?”

Warriors narrowed his eyes, racking his brain to think of a strategy. 

Eventually, they decided to do hit and run tactics first in order to gauge its strength. Four, Sky, Hyrule, and Legend went first as they were capable of thinking on their toes very well and quick on their feet. On Warriors’ orders, Wild and Wind provided the ranged support. 

The beast itself was far more intelligent than the regular ones, and frequently incorporated dodges and counter attacks, causing the three heroes to be able to attack less than they would have liked. Even if they did manage to sink their blades into the flesh, the beast had shrugged off most of them. The Master Sword seemed to be the one that was affecting it the most, which had Sky try to engage it more, but he was either dodged or deflected by the monster’s magic.

Seeing that the trio was beginning to tire, he called them to switch with Twilight, Time, and himself, Wild and Wind continuing to provide cover fire. He thought with the strength behind their swords they could make a dent, but it proved to be a difficult thing as the beast seemed to have an understanding of swordplay and was dodging and countering accordingly. It seemed to have aggravated Twilight, as he tried out his overhead slicing move that Warriors had learned was called the helm splitter.

That was when something new happened. 

As Twilight began to slash down on its head, the beast had raised one of its hands and with a shadowy burst manifested a glowing four-pronged spear. It took all of them by surprise, but he could see there was another emotion in that brief moment he saw Twilight’s face.

Recognition and horror. 

In the next second, Twilight was smacked to the side by the spear, and he crashed into the barrier. 

“Twilight!” they all cried out in horror as their comrade crumpled to the ground, but before they could do anything, they had to dodge backward as the spear made an arc toward them. 

“Wild, Wind! Go check on him!” Warriors ordered them as he dodged away from the spear. They needed to take this thing down quick!

But how?

Luckily for Warriors, it seemed that Four had figured out something, and was running toward him. 

“Warriors! That beast manifested that spear when Twilight was about to attack its head! That might mean--”

“That the head is its weak point!” Warriors realized as well.

Four nodded. “Yes, both Hyrule and I can perform the down thrust, but we would need to freeze it in its tracks so it can’t dodge or block!”

“Freeze?” 

Warriors looked toward Legend who had spoken up. He had one of his hands on one of the medallions that were strapped to his side. “I might be able to do it, but probably for only two shots. I used quite a bit of magic against the initial group of shadow beasts. Would that be enough?” 

Warriors really hoped that would be enough, but it was their best bet. “Let’s hope so! Sky, Time! On my mark disengage and get away from the beast as Legend uses his magic item!” he called out to the two heroes who were locking their swords against the spear. “Four, get ready! You too Hyrule! Follow up Four if he can’t get to it!”

After a few tense moments, Legend nodded toward Warriors, a medallion in one hand and his sword in the other.

“NOW!”

Sky and Time quickly disengaged and backflipped to avoid the swipe. The beast lurched forward as it lost the resistance on its spear, and in the same second, Legend raised his sword high to the sky as the medallion gave an intense glow. White orbs that gave an icy glow shot outwards from the sword, and Warriors felt the chilly energy it radiated. When the wave of icy energy shot forward and hit the shadow beast, it let out a screech as its body quickly began to be encased in ice.

Taking this opening, Four who had equipped a white and feathery cape with blue tips jumped high in the air before thrusting his sword onto the crystal on the mask. 

It let out a shriek as it broke out of the ice, flailing around in pain while Four had his sword embedded. Four got flung off with his sword in his hand from the flailing and hit the ground hard. The hero of the Four Sword sat up dizzily and winced as he tried to put weight on his ankle. 

“Four!!” Warriors cried out. “Watch out!”

He could not do anything as he saw the spear swung toward the injured hero, but thankfully someone else did. 

Time had reached the downed hero just in time and managed to deflect the spear once again, Sky quickly pulling Four away from danger. “Do it again Legend!” 

The aforementioned hero nodded before quickly raised his sword again and released another wave of icy energy, managing to freeze it again. While Warriors pulled Legend who had sunk to a knee from the exertion, Hyrule swiftly performed the downward thrust onto the crystal, cracking it and the mask even further. 

While it seemed to do a lot of damage to the beast as it let out another agonized roar, it also became enraged, swatting off Hyrule with a swipe of its open hand with brute force. Hyrule let out a muffled cry as he impacted the ground. Warriors had to quickly move and intercept the spear swing that was headed toward Hyrule’s way. 

“Sorry Warriors,” he heard Hyrule wince out from behind him as he strained against the spear. “Couldn’t drive my blade in deeper. I think we need to do it one more time.” 

Warriors gritted his teeth. But how were they going to immobilize the beast?

Suddenly he felt the pressure lift away from the spear that was pushing against his shield and he looked over to see a yellow tint over the whole body. Multiple ice arrows came from the direction where Twilight had been flung off and Warriors spared a glance to see Wild with his Sheikah Slate pointed towards the shadow beast and Wind shooting more ice arrows at the beast. 

The tactician looked back when he heard a war cry from another direction.

It was Twilight, who was above the screeching beast’s head, his sword pointed downwards.

With a loud crack, Twilight’s sword broke through both the crystal and the mask and sunk halfway into the head.

The screech that echoed throughout the field was head-splittingly painful, but Twilight held steadfast, twisting his blade to sink it even deeper. The beast’s struggle became weaker and the cry was feeble until it stopped moving completely. Twilight pulled his sword out as soon as he felt the struggling stop and made sure that it wasn’t moving anymore. 

While this would have signaled their victory and they would have been celebrating, it was very quiet in the field as everyone began to notice Twilight’s face as he stepped back from the unmoving beast. 

It was expressionless.

Warriors began to approach Twilight to see what was wrong when they all heard a soft, ethereal voice.

_ “I’m sorry...Link.” _

They all gave gasps of surprise, but the most visible reaction was from Twilight. 

His sword had slipped from his grasp, and it clanged onto the ground. The color was all but gone from his face, his dark blond hair in stark contrast to the ashen white. 

While it was faint, the captain knew this voice from the war across eras. And this voice belonged to someone in the era of…

He had to shield his face as the ice that was encasing the lower half of the body shattered as a bright light shone. When he lowered his hand, Warriors could only stare in sad awe as millions of sparkling particles that looked like stardust were swirling around Twilight and the area where the body of the shadow beast had been slain before a gust of wind carried it up, disappearing in the orange twilight sky. 

Warriors slowly approached where Twilight was standing. He could see that his fellow hero was trembling, one hand gripping something tightly over his chest and head bowed.

The captain silently stabbed his sword into the ground upright, before holding his hand into a fist in front of his heart and bowing in respect.

On the ground where the shadow beast used to be, laid something very familiar to him.

A black stone mask with strange markings and two protrusions on top; something that a sassy imp had been wearing when he had met her during the war.

A crack was running through the middle of the mask.


	2. Stardust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twilight's perspective.

He had never expected to see them in the light world ever again. 

So he could not really be blamed that he froze when he saw the black shadow beasts in front of their group.

_“But how? **She** had broken the connection between the two worlds…!”_

“--light! Get yourself together Twilight!” 

He was shaken out of his shock by Warriors, a fierce expression on his face, but he spied the worried glint in his eyes.

He shook his head to try to focus on the situation on hand. “Sorry Warriors.”

“Twilight, do you know what those are?”

He was asking about the enemies that were not supposed to exist here.

He gave a small affirmative nod, before letting them know the one ability he hated when dealing with them; their ability to revive their fallen brethren if he accidentally leaves one alive. He heard Legend complain about the ability and Twilight could hardly blame him.

The hero of Twilight could hardly remember what happened afterward besides the fact that Wind had shown some fancy sword technique to kill off the last two shadow beasts together, even though it came with the vulnerability of being dizzy for a bit after execution. His mind was still in turmoil with this development. How did these guys get to the light world? Why were there shadow beasts now? Did something happen in the Twilight realm for this to happen?

How many of the Twilight dwellers have been turned into shadow beasts, and how many more did they change themselves? 

These were the questions he kept asking himself, especially the last two as they kept encountering more groups of the shadow beasts. His confusion and worry must have been showing on his face, as he was confronted a few days later by Warriors. 

“Twilight, is there something we need to know?”

He was a bit startled when his fellow hero spoke up abruptly. “What do you mean by that Warriors?” 

“You know what I am talking about.”

He did. But Twilight did not really want Warriors, nor the others learn about the dark secret of the Shadow beasts if he could help it. It was time to play deflection.

“What, about the shadow beasts? What about it? I did say that I have fought them in my journey and that they have the ability to revive others if you leave the last one alive. They revive the others with an ear-piercing cry if you must know,” he spoke in a neutral voice. He hoped his expression, nor tone of voice betrayed that it was not the only thing that Twilight had in his mind.

“There is something else you are not saying Twilight, something that has you very concerned. What is it? And do not tell me that it is nothing. I am a captain in the army, I can tell when someone has something on their mind.” 

The Hero of Twilight flinched at his friend’s -- no, he is in the captain mindset right now, Twilight recognized -- as Warriors’ refused to take Twilight’s deflective answer. 

“Right, I forgot you were at a high rank in the army,” he sighed, averting his eyes from Warriors’ intense gaze. He figured that he could share one small detail that he was worried about. No need to share that Shadow Beasts were once good people who had been cursed and stripped of their free will. That was something he would take to his grave. 

“It’s just...it’s worrisome about the fact that the shadow beasts are here in this dimension at all.” 

He saw Warriors raised his eyebrow, so he elaborated, even though it really pained him to think about the Twilight Realm.

“While those creatures may be from my era, it did not originate from my world. It came from a different world, an...opposite world to that of Hyrule, you could say. The thing is...the gateway between the two worlds is...broken.” Like how his heart had shattered along with the Mirror of Twilight. “So... there should be no way that the Shadow beast would exist on this side of the world! And yet…”

He was mildly glad that he heard something that interrupted his spiraling thoughts.

“Shit how did they sneak up on us?” he heard Warriors hiss out in a frustrated voice as three shadow beasts appeared from the foliage from all sides. Twilight drew out his sword completely before he paled when his right arm met empty air. A glance at Warriors told him that both of them had left their shields back at camp since the firewood trip was supposed to be a fast one. 

“Does it matter? We need to take them out anyway. Warriors, you fine with dispatching one of them while I deal with the other two?”

He heard a reluctant grunt from behind him. “Don’t push yourself Twilight.”

Twilight gave a small grin.

“Same goes for you.”

As soon as he heard Warriors go for the lone beast, Twilight faced toward the other two. He wasn’t that used to going against shadow beasts with others as a human, so playing the stalling game was something he had trouble doing. However, even if it may be ridiculous, he still felt responsible that they had to fight against the shadow beasts, and as such he tried his best to take as many as possible. 

He brought his sword in front of him and shifted his feet slightly outwards.

“Let’s dance boys!”

The two shadow beasts seem to roar in reply and lunged forward at the same time. Expecting this, Twilight executed a backflip before circling to the right, trying to figure out where relative to the shadow beast’s position would be best to execute a few of the hidden techniques that he learned from the Hero’s shade. 

He knew the Mortal Draw was out of the question, it being too risky to pull it off with multiple shadow beasts, and how he was not aiming to kill in one hit just yet, as well as the Jump Strike since it left him vulnerable longer than he would like. 

He narrowed his eyes at the two beasts which slowly stalked toward him as if he was prey. 

There!

As soon as the two beasts had lined up parallel, he quickly jumped to the left side before executing the back slice, rolling around the beast on the left before rising up with a wide slice to its backside. The shadow beast roared out in pain as Twilight gave another slice to the back before weaving out as the other one lashed out, trying to grab his neck.

The hero of Twilight unconsciously brought his free hand his neck, a small growl slipping out. He would still never forget his first encounter with a shadow beast, which had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. He knew that he had been lucky that he did not suffer the same fate as the ones who had been turned into shadow beasts due to the Triforce.

However, he was not taking chances this time as being cursed into an enemy and turning against Warriors was not an option. He needed to make sure that the shadow beasts did not have the opportunity of changing any of his comrades. As he saw the black limb making an arc towards him, he positioned his sword slightly above him, sharp side up. 

The hero of Twilight let a small smirk appear on his face as the offending hand was chopped off with the momentum of the arm trying to claw at him meeting his waiting blade. 

The second beast let out a cry as it backpedaled, cradling its arm, now deprived of its hand. Twilight furrowed his eyebrows. These beasts have never acted this way before, what was going on? 

He could not ponder for long as the other one had recovered from his back slice and was lunging at him, to which evaded with a side step. He could think of it later. 

Doing a roll to dodge a horizontal swipe, he snuck underneath the shadow beast with the missing hand and delivered a swift kick in its chin to stagger it. Using the opportunity, Twilight then jumped over its head and sliced vertically, leaving a deep slash on its masked face. 

“Twilight! I’ve taken care of one of them! We can clear this up!”

About time Warriors.

“Got it!” He called out as he shifted his stance while slowly positioning himself between the last two beasts. He had to time this right.

_ Wait, wait for it... Now! _

As soon as he saw both beasts close enough and raised its hands to strike, Twilight unleashed his spin attack on the two, catching the first one off guard and successfully sliced deep into its throat.

His blood ran cold as the second beast had leaned back and evaded his spin attack.

“SHI—“

A highly unpleasant shriek, one that he did not miss, pierced the air and vibrated throughout the forest. He could not help but briefly shut his eyes and wince as the loud shriek assaulted his sensitive ears. 

“Twilight!” 

Warriors’ cry had him instinctively raise his sword in front of him to shield himself.

A sharp pain ripped through his upper left arm as he felt the wicked claws tear through his skin.

Twilight could not help but let out a cry as he scurried backward, right hand grasping his left arm tightly. He could tell that the scratch was shallow enough but long, and it pretty much went the length of the area that was unprotected. He could tell that he would not be able to wield his sword effectively. He heard Warriors call his name worryingly, and he looked up to see that Warriors was in front of him, sword raised in a defensive position. In front of him was the Shadow beast that had evaded his spin attack earlier, unmoving on the ground. 

“It’s only a scratch, not life-threatening Warriors,” he reported, lifting his right hand away from the wound. “Those bastards got smarter than when I had fought them on my journey, they aimed for my sword arm.”

Good thing he was capable of wielding the sword with his right hand as well.

Wiping his hand of the blood, he switched his sword to his right hand from his left.

“You’re ambidextrous?”

Twilight looked up and gave him a reassuring smile, but it probably came out as a strained one judging Warriors’ expression. 

“Yeah, I had to learn with my right arm when I had broken my left arm. Kept practicing even after it healed in case that my left arm was rendered useless, like now.” 

Before Warriors could reply, he quickly spun around, facing the other one that Warriors had defeated before being revived.

He looked at his left arm, and he could see that it was not an ideal situation to keep fighting, as the fabric around the wound was dyed in red, and small droplets of red occasionally fell to the ground.

They needed help from their comrades. 

“Warriors, I think at this point we need to either time our finishing blows perfectly or stall this out. I don’t like to rely on chance, but I bet the others would have heard that loud shriek.”

At least he hoped so, and they would go to investigate.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Warriors weighing his options before nodding firmly. They decided to stall while trying their best to retreat toward the camp.

“Don’t exert yourself Twilight, you are losing more blood than I would like.”

He tried to reassure that the claw wounds were not a big thing, but Warriors was not satisfied.

“I will be the judge of that later.”

\---

Later that night after being rescued by Hyrule’s Thunder spell, being chided by the rest of the group then healed, Twilight sat a bit away from the campfire, leaning on the tree as he ran the whole encounter through his head. Shadow Beasts have never shown any self-preservation before, and yet the one shadow beast did. He thought these guys were mindless things that only sought to destroy and change their victims into the same beasts. Did this particular beast still have some will left? Was the victim who had been changed still had been struggling? He knew that his partner during his journey had reassured him that he was doing them a blessing, releasing them from the pain, but was he really?

Twilight looked up to the night sky, white stars dotting the black canvas. He silently sent a prayer to all of the victims-turned-shadow beasts that they had to kill. 

He really hoped that the number of victims did not increase. 

\---

Twilight could not help but silently grit his teeth, feeling bitter as he watched the corpses of the shadow beast disintegrate into dust. The list of victims just grew a lot, having to execute 12 more of them just now. What was worse, they were showing more coordination and a sense of self-preservation, which both Four and Time had pointed out. He shook his head negative when Time asked whether this was normal in larger groups. He hadn’t really dealt with these shadows beast more than four or five at a time, so he did not have a clue.

“I personally have never seen such coordination. My era’s Princess Zelda has told me that when the army of shadow beasts had invaded Hyrule Castle, it was somewhat coordinated, but she could not tell much about the beasts’ tactics as it was mostly hidden with the dark dust clouds. The only thing I can think of is that they had a…”

Twilight was cut off of his musing as a loud unnatural shriek echoed, making him flinch. Familiar-looking dark dust clouds and stone pillars that created an orange barrier had him tensing as the group of heroes shifted into a battle-ready stance once again. They had to break formation as Hyrule’s warning had all of them dodge outward as a black and red energy ball rushed toward them. 

The magic energy looked too familiar to the one that had locked him into his wolf form.

The dark dust cloud looked like something he had encountered in the Palace of Twilight, so that meant…

As he watched Sky follow his orders and had the holy power of the Master Sword eat away at the clouds, he held his breath. What was going to be the new enemy be? 

He did not know how to feel when he saw that the enemy was a variant of a shadow beast, but far larger than any of the previous ones, and something he had never encountered before.

Who knew that there were multiple types of Shadow Beasts?

Warning the group off from attempting to deflect the energy ball back with their own sword swings, Twilight quickly let their tactician take reigns in trying to figure out how to deal with this new unknown enemy. Their projectiles were mostly useless due to it being extremely quick on its feet, and their melee attempts were going nowhere and only tiring them out. 

Twilight was getting frustrated. There had to be a weak spot they could utilize, but where was it? Most living beings were vulnerable to damage to the head or neck, so figured that he should try that out first. Managing to get in front of the beast and using the shield bash to stun it for a brief moment, Twilight jumped up high to perform the helm splitter like he had done multiple times with difficult enemies. 

He swung his sword down hard, aiming for the crystal on its mask. 

Only to be blocked by a long, glowing spear. 

Time seemed to slow down for the hero of twilight when the energy he felt from the spear was something he had not felt for a long time.

The energy that he felt from the four-pronged spear that broke through the barrier that had been surrounding Hyrule Castle. 

Time abruptly rewinded to its normal speed as Twilight felt the swing of the spear flinging him into the barrier hard, but he could barely register the physical pain from the impact. He barely remembered to try to stop his head from hitting the ground as he crumpled down. 

_ No, no, no, nonono it can’t be--! His senses must be deceiving him! There was no way that… that…! _

“Twilight!!! Are you alright?”

He snapped out of his panicking denial as Wild lightly shook his shoulder, Wind following right after.

Twilight quickly forced down his panic and nodded to Wild. “Yeah, just slightly jarred. Thank you guys,” he said as Twilight was pulled up by both of them. He looked back where the shadow beast was to see Legend releasing a wave of icy magic from his sword and freezing the shadow beast in place before he had to be pulled away to safety by Warriors.

“I think they are trying to pierce the beast’s head, I saw Four hitting the area earlier and it had let out a pained roar,” Wind told him, answering the question that was on his tongue. They watched with bated breath as Hyrule stabbed his sword down on the forehead, and held himself there for a few seconds before he was smacked off by the enraged shadow beast.

“Damn it, it wasn’t enough,” Wild cursed while Wind he let out a concerned cry when Warriors had to jump in keep Hyrule from being cut in half by the spear.

Twilight was conflicted. If the energy he felt was the same one from that artifact, did that mean that the shadow beast was…

_ You are doing them a favor, releasing them from their pain, Link… _

Twilight gripped his sword tightly.

“Wild, do you think you can use your stasis rune from the Sheikah slate to allow Wind to freeze the shadow beasts with ice arrows? I-I’ll…” his voice slightly wavered and cracked before he swallowed the anguish and continued. “I’ll deal the finishing blow.”

Both heroes must have caught his hiccup, as they both glanced at Twilight with a concerned look in their eyes before nodding. “Yeah, we’ll be able to do it,” Wild confirmed as he brought out his Sheikah slate. 

Twilight gave both of them a nod before he rushed toward. He ignored the telltale sign of the stasis rune activating on the target, he did not pay attention to the icy magic that sped past him, he only looked straight ahead, steeling himself to deliver the Ending Blow to the shadow beast. 

Holding his sword slightly above his head with two hands, he lept up towards the beast’s forehead and aimed down to the cracked crystal there, stabbing it with all his might. 

He ignored the piercing shriek that rang out as he drove his sword further in, eventually cracking the mask in half.

As soon as he felt the beast’s struggle come to a complete stop, he silently pulled out his sword and hopped off from the remaining corpse, which was slowly showing signs of disintegrating. The battlefield was very quiet as he stared at the dead shadow beast, not feeling anything--

_“I’m sorry...Link.” _

Blood turned to ice as Twilight heard a faint, but familiar and sorely missed voice ring out. He barely registered his blade hitting the ground, slipped out of his hand. He did not hear any footsteps that slowly approached as he felt another crack appear on his heart made out of glass, the anguish threatening to drown him. 

_ The shadow beast was truly…! _

He was suddenly blinded by a bright light that emitted from the dead shadow beast and had to close his eyes for a moment.

_ “Link…” _

Opening his eyes at the call of his name, he saw that the ice encasing the shadow beast had shattered, and small dust particles were swirling around him. In the bright light, the floating particles looked like stardust.

A small whisper sounded in his ear as he felt a welcomingly familiar but sad presence softly wrapping around him.

_ “I’m so sorry... And thank you so much...” _

He felt the swirling stardust collect around his right hand and forming something before a small weight dropped in his hand. 

_ “A gift… Link, I…” _

A sudden gust of wind whirled upward, cutting off the fading faint voice as the sparkling dust was carried up and faded into the orange sky.

He stared up at the sky for a good while before looking down and opening his hand to see what was in his hand. 

It was a ring with strange markings. Something he remembered being used as a hair tie by a certain friend he would never see again. 

Familiar energy was emitting faintly from the ring, making him grip it tighter.

He could not stop the tears from leaking from his eyes as he spoke very softly.

_ “See you later…” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a while to think about how I would end this one shot, but while writing, I came across a beautiful English cover of Aimer's "Last Stardust" that was arranged by [AmaLee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7XQIua7V3w)  
The title of this story was also inspired by this song as well. I would recommend listening to this song.


End file.
